Romney wants steep cuts in cultural agencies

This is fairly predictable, but Mitt Romney — who still looks to me and many others like the most viable of possible Republican candidates for president — would like to see deep cuts in what’s already fairly paltry federal spending on arts and culture.

So if you’re in favor of arts spending, that’s bad. However, it’s interesting that Romney holds back from saying that he would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts altogether.

In an op-ed piece in USA Today, Romney said he would “eliminate every government program that is not absolutely essential [because] the federal government should stop doing things we don’t need or can’t afford,” then gave five examples. Four examples clearly cited programs or funding categories to be eliminated; the fifth was “enact deep reductions in the subsidies for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Legal Services Corporation.”

We asked the Romney campaign for clarification — does he want to eliminate cultural grantmaking or reduce it? The response was that he doesn’t want to eliminate the NEA, NEH or the two other agencies but would cut their aggregate funding by half. The NEA and NEH now receive $155 million per year each — among the smallest agency appropriations in the federal budget. Earlier this year, a majority of Republican House members called for eliminating them.